Grasping for Any Way to Prevent Alzheimer’s

By PAM BELLUCK
NYT

Is there a way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease? Last week, a study presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Paris suggested there might be, something that would give hope to millions who worry that one day they may be struggling with dementia.

The new study, by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, estimated how many Alzheimer’s cases might be attributable to certain behaviors or conditions: physical inactivity, smoking, depression, low education, hypertension, obesity and diabetes.

The authors used a mathematical model to surmise that these behaviors and conditions, all of which can be modified, are responsible for about half of the roughly 5.3 million Alzheimer’s cases in the United States and 34 million cases worldwide.

And they calculated that if people addressed these risks — by exercising, quitting smoking, increasing their education or losing weight, for example — a significant number of Alzheimer’s cases could be prevented. Reducing the prevalence of these risk factors by 10 percent, the researchers estimated, could prevent 1.1 million cases worldwide; reducing these risk factors by 25 percent could prevent more than three million cases.

The operative word was “could.” As the researchers pointed out, there is not yet scientific proof that any of these risk factors in fact cause Alzheimer’s. Only if they are shown to do so could the new analysis be considered a practical recipe for preventing the disease.

(More here.)